U-2 Spy Plane Caused Widespread Shutdown of U.S. Flights
May 5th, 2014Update: FAA Confirms Spy Plane Scrambled Air Traffic Control in California
Via: NBC:
The Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed an exclusive NBC News report that a Cold War-era spy plane scrambled the computer systems of a major air traffic control system in Southern California, resulting in region-wide air travel delays affecting hundreds of flights and thousands of passengers.
In a statement, the FAA acknowledged that its air traffic system, which processes flight plan information, “experienced problems while processing a flight plan filed for a U-2 aircraft that operates at very high altitudes under visual flight rules.”
The U-2 spy plane, the same type of aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over Russia 50 years ago, passed through the airspace monitored by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Calif., around 2 p.m. on Wednesday. The L.A. Center handles landings and departures at the region’s major airports, including Los Angeles International (LAX), San Diego and Las Vegas.
The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other. According to sources, the U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but the computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.
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When this came out a couple of days ago, it seemed like some of the happiest horse shit I’d seen in months or even years. I thought I’d wait a couple of days to see if some other narrative emerged.
Nope, the U-2 theory it is.
For whatever it’s worth… Here you go.
Via: NBC:
A relic from the Cold War appears to have triggered a software glitch at a major air traffic control center in California Wednesday that led to delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights across the country, sources familiar with the incident told NBC News.
On Wednesday at about 2 p.m., according to sources, a U-2 spy plane, the same type of aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over Russia 50 years ago, passed through the airspace monitored by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Calif. The L.A. Center handles landings and departures at the region’s major airports, including Los Angeles International (LAX), San Diego and Las Vegas.
The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other. The U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but the computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.
Though the exact technical causes are not known, the spy plane’s altitude and route apparently overloaded a computer system called ERAM, which generates display data for air-traffic controllers. Back-up computer systems also failed.
Haha, I thought about the same thing when I first saw this. I was hoping you could explain this one away…
Well … it looks like an overflow.
Assuming…
1) They only use positive AMSL
2) L.A. Center uses an unsigned integer for altitude.
3) The news report stating “60,000” was a simplification of say 66,000
Then 66,000 could become 465 feet. (int(16) = 65,535)
From what I could find, “LA Center” is in Palmdale, rather close to Edwards AFB. I think they can see out to Groom Lake. So if this is “old” software, they should have picked up SR-71 (and it’s cousins), U-2, and some other not-so-public things they’ve flown in that area.
There was probably rather intentional flight arrangements made back in the day. Like avoiding commercial routes, even if you are miles above them.
It could have also been a non-issue. A SR-71 cruising at 85,000 feet with the integer problem, would show it cruising at about 19,500 feet. So it would have shown way under commercial traffic.
If the U-2 had been up a bit closer to 70,000 feet, and not so close to which ever airports it was close to, it may not have been an issue. He may have just been a little low due to weather (like, a change in air pressure relative to his instruments), and LA Center using AMLS, it would appear to be closer to the ground.
The pilot may have navigated too close to one of the many airspaces there accidentally. Like, he may not fly the U-2 exclusively, and he was using familiar waypoints. I’m guessing being at 60K feet fairly close to LA, he wouldn’t have been coming from or going to Edwards or Beale. I don’t know if they’re still parking them at Groom Lake. It’s not like they really advertise much about what they do there. 🙂 Edwards and Beale are the only ones that admit they currently have active U-2’s at them in the US.
But … I don’t know. I wasn’t there. The gov’t doesn’t tell me anything about their spy missions. It’s just some guesses. At least my guesses are better than most news reporters a lot of the time. 🙂
Ah. Here’s more information on the flight. Get it while you can, I think these go pay-only after something like 30 days.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NASA809/history/20140501/1800Z/KPMD/KPMD
According to the altitude graph and history, it was in LA Center and Oakland Center airspace for the whole flight. The last half hour of the flight is missing accurate data, just after it descended from 60,000 feet to 57,000 feet at 35.3750, -118.3914. East of Bakersfield, and North of Palmdale. Way out in the middle of nowhere, when it was coming back for a landing at Palmdale.
It looks like the pilot was out for a leisurely cruise, about 3 hours in the air, probably a check ride.
Two days later, they took it out to Robins AFB (Georgia), and the next day took it out for another local ride.
Looking at the graphs, there are some odd transitions in airspeed. I wonder if they were checking for something performance related, or if it is/was having mechanical issues.
The ride from Palmdale to Robins has pretty consistent airspeed except where they were wandering over Florida.
I found on another board, where they were saying similar to what I did above. It’s unreasonable to think they haven’t seen U-2 and SR-71 traffic before.
The U-2 pilot may have done something like left a radar countermeasure enabled that threw off LA Center’s altitude tracking.
Atlanta TRACON has reports down to 400 feet on it’s arrival at Robins, but the LA Center radar lost altitude info at 57,000 feet, when it should have had good data still. Something broke it.